disrupting myself, or the jump from Product Marketing to Product Management

Product Manager Day 111: A Whole New Workflow

I’m always impressed by Product Managers who seem to have their work life under control: well-planned calendars, neat to-do lists and what not. (Kudos to Catherine Shyu from Sendgrid, Ellen Chisa from Kickstarter and Max from Globehop – who happens to be the guy who introduced me to the world of Product Management)

In contrast, my notebooks and to-do lists kinda look like Godzilla was trying to paint with a teeny paintbrush (it ain’t pretty). Principle-based living seems to work better for me. Still, I try.

Today I was inspired by this introduction to Scrum and this article on triaging Backlog items to come up with a more structured workflow. And – gasp– I even put some recurring events in my calendar for some of them:

Personal Triage Session (2 hours): running through Raw Feedback to determine whether to (1) transfer it to the Product Backlog as a story or an epic, or (2) send it to the “graveyard”

Personal Backlog Review (2 hours): running through the Product Backlog to pick out topics for refinement and for initial prioritization – I will shortlist some items for the next sprint, and then another 20 or so items. Sufficiently refined topics will transition to a different status (we use” Selected for Development”), while the rest remain backlogged. I’ll probably need my Product Strategy ready so this prioritization is more effective.

Team Backlog Prioritization Meeting (2 hours every 2 weeks): Running through stories without clear implementation solutions, to get team input. Estimation of stories and other backlog items. Further prioritization of next sprint and top 20 items.

Team Planning Meeting (1 hour every 2 weeks): Firming up items for the sprint/release and clarifying specs further.

Retrospective (1-2 hours every 2 weeks): review the release mostly from a process standpoint – the blockers, the good, the improves.

Purists might point out the differences between true Scrum and this workflow, but I think this is a good start, maybe a bridge to adopting more proper practices (or jettisoning them away if not working).

One of the concerns I do have with Scrum is managing the roadmap – how do you put a date on stories that aren’t estimated or defined, especially when you estimate them only once a sprint? Maybe it’ll be like what the video – if you can’t apply proper Scrum, it probably has more to do with the organization than the practice itself.

I jumped from Product Marketing to Product Management at Zalora recently. These posts represent a journal of my learnings and reflections. Feel free to connect on Twitter @wasabigeek.